You have access to this content through your organization’s enterprise subscription to the Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN). Would you like to go there now? Your choice will be remembered until you close your browser.

Shaky Start For Sikorsky M28 Demo Tour

DALLAS—An altitude violation and lack of situational awareness in the busy Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex airspace during a demonstration flight the morning of March 8 marred what otherwise should have been the celebratory relaunch tour of a relatively unknown Sikorsky twin turboprop aircraft, the M28.
Aviation Week was on board SP-DGW, which had been flown to Dallas from Mielec, Poland, last week, to conduct a pilot report on the aircraft.
Built by Sikorsky subsidiary PZL Mielec, the ...

REGISTER FOR FREE ACCESS (Valid Email Required)

Register now for free access to "Shaky Start For Sikorsky M28 Demo Tour" and other premium content selected daily by our editors. Your free registration will also allow you to comment on any article posted to Aviationweek.com.

Current magazine subscribers: digital access to articles associated with your subscription are now included at no added charge to you. Simply use your subscriber email to log in to your account (or contact us for assistance in updating your account).

Discuss this Article 39

The Authors statement of the Pilots lack of English proficiency to operate in busy airspace is wrong. When you get endorsed English proficient you should be able to operate in all classes of airspace. The Pilots were clearly not English proficient and should be made to take a 709 ride in similar airspace and congestion to prove they are. These Pilots that are not English proficient are a hazard to all

This article demonstrates one of AW&ST's strengths - the strong capability of its editor/writer staff. It is heartening to read a report when we know that the person preparing it has been down the road in real time and in real conditions. Good job.

"The captain manned the radio, but his English proficiency would prove to be less than adequate for the flight in demanding airspace. The left-seat pilot, who acted as pilot-flying, had less English proficiency than the captain. A third pilot, who sat in the cabin, was proficient in English but did not have access to the cockpit communications."

Very thoughtful assignments for the location. Shrewd enough to bring back the bigoted Polish jokes of the 1970s.

As a person of Polish descent, I experienced those bigoted 1970s! This article was by no means an attempt to smear the reputation of these pilots - they were put into an untenable position by billion-dollar corporations (Sikorsky, Lockheed Martin) who did not do their homework.

True that the PIC has the last word, but I am surprised that a multi-national corporation wouldn't have a local pilot available in each location to perform a risk assessment with the crew before a flight or series of flights. This is basic SMS stuff.

In any large, complex organization carrying out many large, complex projects, it's very easy for a basic but important detail to be missed in planning, particularly if the managers in charge of the project are not familiar with all aspects of the action. In this case, those who set up the tour skipped the ATC aspects of the planned demonstration flights, probably because they had never done demonstration flights out of a major airport outside of Poland. Previous demo flights had been done in venues with much lower traffic volumes without significant difficulties, so the crew did not anticipate problems at DFW. Lockheed-Martin assumed their subsidiary knew everything that needed to be done and thus did not assign anyone to review the plans (ordering such a review could have been viewed as questioning the competence of the subsidiary corporation, with potential relational problems down the road).

This is not to excuse the failure, but to promote awareness of the need to speak up if you notice an unaddressed safety issue. Just because some higher ranking person is responsible doesn't mean he thought of it or got around to it yet, so a tactfully placed question on the matter could avert a hazard.

I concur with Raymond. Excellent reporting and analysis. When controllers hear a heavy accent and awkward English, they should be perceptive enough to slow down a bit and attempt to make sure the non-native English speaker(s) comprehend. While legal responsibility rests on the pilot there is an opportunity on the part of a controller(and moral obligation) to step outside the box and prevent a possible close call or midair. These pilots didn't have a clue about class Bravo airspace.

Recently, with the pilot shortage, I have noticed an increase in temporary/contract-hiring of Eastern European pilots with rating skills gained in the military (or Siberia). I wonder if this is an unfair comment.

This article brings back bad memories of when I used to fly out of a busy big city airport which also had a lot of helicopter training going on that usually involved foreign students of Japanese or Saudi descent. The communication issues were non-stop, so we learned to keep a wide berth from the choppers and always expected them to do whatever the worst thing imaginable was-because you were dealing with young guys learning a lot of new skills at the same time in a foreign land.

The planning for this flight was abysmal, bad location for wringing-out an aircraft, pilots who did not do their homework and did not possess the basic skills needed to perform the job in this country-shame on sikorsky for such poor management.

Surely this sort of planes capability would be best demonstrated in some postage stamp airfield, as that would be its forte.
As for the procedural lapses, maybe they had done recent demonstrations in Africa or Asia where that sort of approach is more common.

"This article was by no means an attempt to smear the reputation of these pilots - they were put into an untenable position by billion-dollar corporations (Sikorsky, Lockheed Martin) who did not do their homework."

I was not blaming the pilots. I thought my comments were laced with sarcasm at the suits who clearly did not make crew selection with the situation the crew would face in mind.

"Surely this sort of planes capability would be best demonstrated in some postage stamp airfield, as that would be its forte."

Agreed, the crew seemed to think they would encounter airspace where a maximum performance departure could lead to immediate airwork.

""Surely this sort of planes capability would be best demonstrated in some postage stamp airfield, as that would be its forte."

"Dallas was added relatively late to coincide with Sikorsky’s presence at the Heli-Expo convention."
- AW&ST

Management scheduled the demonstration at the last minute.

"There did not appear to be any Sikorsky or Lockheed Martin representatives present with knowledge of local airspace procedures or requirements."
- AW&ST

Management too busy visiting Heli-Expo to do their job?

Or perhaps management was unfamiliar with flight characteristics of aircraft without one of those rotor thingies on top?

"There were electronic charts on the two small navigation displays on the Garmin navigation and communications radios in the panel, and the two pilots likely had tablets with charts, though none were out and available for easy reference. I did not see any paper charts on the flight deck."
- AW&ST

Autor of this article is really unfair and is like a vulture... they were trying do best and gave you lot of hospitality but you (writer of this stuff) have just used them to grow up in your small sad world. Good luck!

That's not fair Karol. I would be failing my job as a safety editor for an international aviation publication if I did not point out safety risks to the public. As I pointed out in earlier comments, I do not blame this crew (who I very much liked), I wrote the article to put pressure on the companies running this tour to conduct s thorough safety assessment of the operation to make sure it is safe for all involved. I did not enjoy having to write this article in the least.

John, first of all unfair is your point of view. Obviously proper communication and fly safety is essential but pronunciation in American English is significantly different then British English especially when we are talking about aviation English. All EU pilots are learning British English. I can understand that for people with a native US English how are not learning any other languages is not possible to understand these problems. You don't know how difficult became communication when one side has never tried other languages. I am flying all over the world and at the beginning of my career I've met same problem with a US pronunciation and plenty of shortcuts. I remember some cases in US Air Force bases in Ramstein, Bagram etc when EU pilots had same troubles. In all that situations ATC how was then supervising has took com, after pilots questions: "is there anybody speaking english on TWR?".
The point is that ATC probably felt same that you and speak same language without understanding basics of that situation. I don't want to make you angry but only I would like to you to be able understand basics of that kind of situations at least than start blaming crew or their company because you may sounds like representative of their competitors, not like objective reporter.

It's not that cut and dry Karol. There is is NO excuse for a class Bravo deviation. If you accept the left seat as the PIC, then your piloting and English skills had better be up to the expectations of the ATC facilities controlling your flight. British English or not. Aviation English is the same, and someone flying all over the world would know that. I am based in Riyadh, and even ther English is spoken and is understood, and there are NO exceptions for poor language skills. I don't care if your from Poland or Pennsylvania, If you're not up to the task, stay out of the front seats.

Mr. Croft: Perhaps you could have inquired as to the availability of Mr. Lincoln for both the flight and the assessment. We know he would have graciously made himself available. He might be available in the future for such endeavors.

Any "accusations" were in the evidence. There clearly was inadequate flight planning but that point was made by reciting facts which could be interpreted by knowing persons to indicate less than professional conduct.

For Karol,
Unfamiliar airspace means have the charts at hand. It avoids groping the brain bag (or now days an electronic brain bag) while some approach or departure controllers wonders why you don't reply followed by an embarrassing violation or unwelcome crunching noise.

Hospitality is nice. Professional flying is essential. The better you are prepared the better things go if something goes south. That fantastic grease job landing starts with a careful pre-flight.

"I can teach a monkey to fly but I can't teach you to think."
- Mac McLandon

I totally understand the point that John wants to make with this article, and I cannot agree more with him on responsibilities... I would like however to add on the many comments made on language proficiency & ATC.
Americans have a tendency to forget that they have the advantage of using their native language as a communication mean. What is more, when flying in the US, the vast majority of ATC traffic is American. It means that, for pilots as well as for ATCOs, there is a tendency to use non-standard sloppy phraseology and use inappropriate speech rates. This is the cause of the problem.
As a European non-English ATCO, I have experienced this many times and have had my fair share of problems with US pilots. These problems we don't have with British pilots, neither are there many with foreign pilots in UK airspace.
Rigorous standard communications is the key to safety, and on that matter Americans need to improve.

nothing except truth man - 100% on target. This is along my personal experiences. What escaped to most of commenting peoples, ATC role is to help flying crew, but because of unknown reasons many of them just acting in a way increasing stress level in cockpit instead. I'm fully supporting your point that fact you are native speaker not necessary means you are using version of language widely understood - especially in Texas! :D

Lack of English Proficiency is unacceptable; period! Their are prescribed standards and standardised vocabulary.
This flight should have terminated prior to takeoff; when the lack of proficiency was apparent.
A "Postage Stamp" airport requires the same language proficiency; the safety issue is the same. The small airports can be a more challenging environment with non-professional pilots mixing into the stream. Americans do need to improve their standardisation.
Some countries tend to accept lower standards locally, thus pilots are at a disadvantage when flying elsewhere.
Permitting pilots to use local languages locally is creating a problem of proficiency. This is doing pilots a dis-service, not doing them a favour.

The SMS philosophy is for everyone from ops to support to peripheral parties to learn from experience, correct deficiencies and avoid threats to safety. It has to start with a report of what happened. John Croft gave us that along with some pretty good assessment of contributing factors. And then so much criticism and blame and potentially insulting remarks. There's lots there for all of us to think about next time around... I'll try, but being human, I might still not get it 100% right. I need the rest of you to help so that together we get it right rather than point fingers and let things continue to go wrong. Congratulations to controllers and crews and whoever else allowed this flight to end with a good honest article by John about lessons learned. It could have been worse.

It sounds like every call was repeated 2 to 7 times by ATC before getting a response and fortunately the airspace was not very congested at the time (in my opinion). After numerous missed calls and a class B airspace bust, it sounds like the author, referred to as "an instructor" by ATC really helped get vectors back to the airport and a landing clearance. It sounds like ATC helped a student in a Seneca in the pattern to avoid the "Polish Wagon."

ATC is continually calling SDWPG, SDPWG etc not a SP-DGW... non standard call sign proving they are not ready for foreigners.
When ATC speaks English not a native US English everything seems to be clear for them. It is really so hard to comprehend by you native US guys? My recommendation is to learn other languages, then you will be able to grasp it.
Nobody's realize that ATC is surprised that suddenly not a native EU pilot is calling and can't understand them?! Something nonstandard and they are in a troubles. Approach is very smart and speaks normally so they can manage it.
Please don't be so "over fake smart" like author of that article in which he boasts of one's achievements to trample over people... hope everything will back him in his rats race. Remember John: "What goes around comes around".